Gift-giving time is bearing down on us faster than the new iPad flew off the shelves, and the pressure to find the perfect present is as intense as the Facebook IPO rumors. The possibilities are as endless as, oh well, you get the idea. In an effort to brighten a holiday season hemmed in on all sides by a nasty job-market funk and lingering toxic-asset indigestion, we’ve come to the rescue of the person who has come up with nothing for the person who has everything. Here is The Ultimate Silicon Valley Holiday Gift List.

A Twitter account with 100 followers: It’s the gift that keeps on tweeting. Just imagine the joy you’ll unleash by giving that special someone his or her very own Twitter handle, complete with a built-in following in the Twittersphere. It’s free and it’s easy to set up. Superuser Rodney Rumford, an early adopter of the San Francisco-based microblogging phenom and co-founder of photo-sharing service Plixi, walks us through the process.

Say it’s a gift for your jazz-guitar-loving younger brother. Go to Twitter.com. Sign him up (free) and grab a handle like “lovingthelicks,” create a password, and you’re halfway there. “Search for other users who have ‘jazz’ in their profile, jazz musicians, and even jazz record labels,” he says. “Once you start following these people, they’ll often follow you back. And if you send out a few tweets, like ‘listening to miles davis right now,’ you conceivably could get 100 followers in a few days.” Then you wrap it up and stick it under the tree. “It’s a great gift, because you’ve basically kick-started your brother right into the Twitter stream.” Cost: Free

Ukulele lessons: It’s The Little Stringed Instrument that Could, and it’s enjoying its 15 minutes of fame. Mr. Schuester played one on “Glee.” The Bay Area, with its craftsmen and its embrace of Hawaiiana, is a uke hot bed. Even alt-rock band Sister Hazel has embraced the four-stringed sweet spot. Now you can give the gift of plucking, adding your loved one to the ranks of students piling into Rodney Takahashi’s San Jose classroom Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

“I was giving lessons to about 30 students in my condo for three years before moving to Japantown in 2009,” says Takahashi, 43. “Now we have 132 students. I think it’s popular because the ukulele is small and easy and fun to carry around and play.” Go online to ukulelejams.com for more information on purchasing a gift certificate. Start off with a gift of three months of lessons to see if the uke magic sticks. Cost: $240

Placeholder reservation for a 2012 Tesla Model S: OK, so the battery-powered four-door electric baby Tesla is expected to deliver next year will cost about $50,000, and a chance to reserve one of the first off the assembly line requires a tenth of that upfront. But what greater bragging rights could Santa bring your dear eco-obsessive mother-in-law this Christmas? Assuming she can afford the end product, and assuming her happiness is worth five grand to you, go to Tesla’s website and get to work.

A click here and there, with payment from your credit card or checking account, gets you a place in line. You’ll be behind 3,000 others who beat you to it, but spokeswoman Khobi Brooklyn says Tesla will get you your very own factory-order “production number,” along “with a nice gift certificate to put under the tree or in a stocking.” Then sit back, think about all the carbon dioxide this gift will not put into the atmosphere, and wait for the love to flow. Cost: $5,000

The killer toy of this holiday season: It’s called the Parrot AR.Drone. This is the gift that your friends and family members would love to have even if they’ve never heard of it before. They will soon enough. Already nearly 2 million people have watched the YouTube demo, marveling at “the first quadricopter remotely controlled by your iPhone,” with its four propellers, ultrasound altimeter to enable hovering, and two onboard cameras broadcasting live feeds back to your smartphone. By tilting your iPhone or iPod touch, you use Wi-Fi to send the AR.Drone flying over the neighborhood, through that open window, down that staircase, up over your girlfriend’s head. Of course, someone’s going to get hurt with this thing sooner or later. So buy one now before it’s outlawed. Cost: $300

A medical marijuana card: Legally, of course, your gift recipient must first be authentically medically needy. Once that’s taken care of, you can help them get good and stoned for the holidays. And the folks at Be Legally Green on The Alameda in San Jose are ready and willing to help wrap up that buzz with a big ribbon. For the price of a one-way ticket to Vegas, this self-described “medical cannabis recommendation office” will sell you — with one of several online coupons (in really mind-blowing colors!) that are updated periodically — an in-house doctor’s “recommendation,” assuming the coupon bearer can prove they have an appropriate ailment (wink, wink). That paper, says office manager Lauren Eisenstadt, “entitles you to a medical cannabis card, so your gift recipient can go to a dispensary” and buy pot. Look for online Christmas specials, too, and, um, let’s see, hmm, what were we just talking about? Cost: $59

Patrick May is an award-winning writer for the Bay Area News Group working with the business desk as a general assignment reporter. Over his 34 years in daily newspapers, he has traveled overseas and around the nation, covering wars and natural disasters, writing both breaking news stories and human-interest features. He has won numerous national and regional writing awards during his years as a reporter, 17 of them spent at the Miami Herald.

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